My party is getting owned by a Bear-like Treant but I can’t tell what level it is. My characters are level two, should I go elsewhere and do some quests or am I supposed to push through here at this level?
That’s one of the hardest fights in the first part of the game. It’s much easier if you wait until your characters have reached level 3 and you have a full party. There’s a nice guide on gamerguides.com that show a good order to explore the different areas.
Yeah that thing is a monster, you want to be level 3 with a full party probably. Then use buffs and consumables to take it down.
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot tomorrow!
What’s your party comp? Throw some fire bombs if you have any. I think that enemy is doable at level 2. Consider creating a custom character to add a fifth to your party. Having a pure rogue is super helpful for DPS.
At the moment I only have myself (2h paladin), Amiri, Linzi and Valerie. I opted for the temple first rather than chase down the gnome, but in hindsight it might have been easier to bring a cleric to this fight as well.
You get a cleric when you finish that battle.
As far as that fight, you can go recruit a few other companions first if you find it too difficult. Lore (Nature) is what allows you to see the stats of mob. The bear-like treant has Damage Reduction so you are reliant on big hits to do damage.
As far as the start goes, it’s always better to go after Tartuccio at the first location (not the Sycamore) then do whatever else since there is no impact on your NPC’s if you do.
As far as guides go I don’t personally use them on my first play-through since it removes the discovery aspect. However, I also wanted to add that there are a lot of NPC failstates in this game (many of which you won’t understand the impact of your decision since the game doesn’t give any indicators as of 1.1). So if you are one of those players who can’t stand failstates then you may want to use one. Also the game is huge time investment, so that might factor into your decision.
Bat that game demands a bit of hard min/maxing in my opinion. It does get much better when thaco of the characters gets better, (“To hit armor class zero”) (or the equivalent).
You also get one after battle with Tartuccio. I did have a sneak peak at some guides and the reason I decided to go to the temple is because the other companion (Tristan?) gets injured for the duration of chapter 1 otherwise.
Tristan doesn’t get injured (and unusable) as long as you don’t go to Old Sycamore. Basically whoever you leave last (it’s trigger is upon entering an area not actually saving them) is unusable in Chapter 1. I think if you leave Tristan last he also loses out on levels and you get a project to level him up to your level in Chapter 2.
Ok cheers. Guess I’ll backtrack to the gnome’s location and recruit the cleric hopefully hit lvl 3 on the way and then return to this bear monstrosity.
Alternately you can deal with the League and pick up 2 more members that way, it should be right next to you.
Well, a couple scrolls and lucky hits later and the beast went down. Mostly thanks to Amiri and her Rage, she’s incredible. In the very next encounter I ran into Kalannah where Amiri was once again the mvp. It’s actually amazing how fast a melee character can deal with enemy casters if they’re allowed near.
In any case, I have a full party now - 2h Paladin PC, Tristan, Linzi, Amiri, Octavia and Valerie. Party seems pretty solid at first glance but if any of these should be dropped sooner rather than later please let me know :).
I disliked I couldn’t have a NPC that had magic missile…all the characters are excluded from it or have power sets not optimized for it. I restarted my game which I plan to continue once I finish off ATOM’s last battle and bought myself a custom made NPC (for 2000 that scales up fast so buy early if you want one) that specialized in Evocation for pure damage output making magic missile and fireballs even more deadly.
I’ll miss some npc stories keeping her in my party, but the sheer power output is hard for me to let go.
I also have a Paladin btw. I played with a sword and shield last time, but I’m trying two handed this time because my party wasn’t putting out as much damage as I wanted…
New player Advise… focus on abilities that improve your THAC0, as the game is cruel in making enemies have massive ACs
My entire party now has curse of feeble body, is there a way I can easily remove this? Perhaps by visiting the healing pool where I fought the Bear Treant?
Second, aoe spells - do they affect everyone in the area or just allies or enemies respectively? For example Tristian’s Heal Living channel spell - it says all living creatures in an area around the caster, does that include enemies as well when I’m trying to heal my party?
And on an unrelated note, I’m amazed at how much less chaotic combat here is compared to Pillars of Eternity. Amazing, considering it’s more or less the same engine and setup.
Yes, PF AoE is surprisingly oldschool. In the tabeltop game, there’s a “Selective Spell” metamagic to get around this, but I’m not sure if the PC game implements it, cuz I never got high enough level to try.
The heal living channel heals living enemies as well. I believe there is a feat later to make it friendlies only.
If you can find a priest they probably sell remove curse scrolls (or turn on that setting that removes conditions when resting, rest and turn it back off?)
Remember, heal AOEs will harm your undead party member.
This is pretty much my default party still long after recruiting all NPCs. Amiri is the only one I swap out on a regular basis. Valerie is needed for tanking, Octavia does amazing damage and has some useful skills and Linzi has the other skills I need and she also documents my awesomeness :-) Tristan has some important buffs and ofc healing, but isn’t exactly mvp when it comes to damage.
That depends on the spell. It’s actually indicated by the icon in the target section of the spell description. Brown figure = yourself, blue figures = allies, red figures = enemies. E.g. Color Spray has blue+red = hits allies and enemies, while Bless has only blue figures = allies only.
However both the icon and the spell descriptions are a bit buggy. E.g Stinking Cloud says that it targes “all enemies”, but the icon has both blue and red figures. In this case the figure is correct and the text is wrong.